Flappy Bird: The Annoying, Frustrating Game That Will Change Your Life

Post Angry Birds, another game is flapping the world by storm. Flappy Bird, in all its 8-bit pixelated glory is set to invade your living room, bedroom, office and ultimately your life. You’ve been forewarned.

The game looks impossibly simple. Or so it seems. You play the Flappy Bird character, and your objective is to fly through a sequence of vertical pipes. You propel the bird by tapping on the screen. Pretty straightforward, right?

The challenge though, is that even the slightest brush of the pipe will send Flappy Bird spiralling down to the ground, ending the game. And this happens. A lot. Sometimes you breach five pipes. Sometimes three. And sometimes even nothing. The further you go (if you make it that far), the harder it gets.

You earn medals as you progress further. 10 pipes earn you a Bronze medal, 20 earns you a Silver medal, 30 a Gold medal and; 65 and above earns you a Platinum medal.

Get used to this. You’ll see this. A lot.

The annoying game was created by Don Nguyen of GEARS Studios, a developer based in Vietnam. The game was first released in May 2013 on iOS. It is not immediately known why the game has mysteriously gained popularity. It has over 240,000 four-star reviews on the App Store. Its one of the most popular free games on the App Store, beating the likes of the other famous feathered game – Angry Birds.

Its phenomenal rise in popularity over the past few days could have been spurred by the Android version that was just released on 30 January 2014. The game has been downloaded over 1 million times on Google Play.